Sunday, August 23, 2015

"When your Muslim coach prays"

Imagine yourself as the Christian parent of a student-athlete, and the new men’s basketball coach at your university announces that his Muslim faith will be an important part of his strategy.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what is known as a false dichotomy. His entire article is predicated on that false dichotomy:

i) We should simply deport Muslims, like they are doing in Norway. Muslims reject our social contract. They reject the Bill of Rights. They foment domestic terrorism. They don't belong here. They don't believe in our system of gov't.

ii) Don't college basketball teams have more than one coach?

iii) What about chaplains?

iv) What about sending your kid to a Christian college?

The prayers, by the way, are voluntary. But the coach will take prayer requests only in the name of Allah, not Jesus, because the latter is not Allah.

Why should I ask the coach to pray for me? As I Christian, I can pray directly to Jesus. The coach is not my spiritual mediator. If my coach is Muslim, I should pray for him–not vice versa.

Prayers will be performed by prostrating yourself with your forehead to the ground, and facing Mecca. The coach does this five times a day, but players don’t have to do it that way. It’s voluntary, you see.

Yes, it's voluntary.

The coach proudly displays a Quran everywhere he goes, including on the team bus. He was raised reading it, and he would like you, as his student-athlete, to read that wonderful book, as well.

Actually, there's something to be said for reading the Koran, just as we might read Mein Kampf or the Communist Manifesto.

The coach has won many games by integrating Islam into the team. Islam also worked for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Muhammad Ali, and so there is actual scientific proof that serving Allah makes you a winner.

But now you feel coerced to follow the coach’s religious preferences for fear that you may not advance as a player.

Merely Feel coerced. Not that you actually are coerced.

And what happens if you are a non-believer, but your coach preaches that faith is fundamental to life? No religious preference is listed by 27.5 percent of the college freshmen who started last fall, according to a recent major survey.
Imagine excluding 27.5 percent of potential recruits who may not see any particular faith as suitable for their lives. Imagine non-Christian students, who may be talented, but don’t want to play for a coach that is perceived as imposing a favored faith on players.

Merely perceived to practice favoritism.

So Avalos is telling us unbelievers are so intellectually weak and impressionable that they cave into mere feelings of coercion or mere perceptions of favoritism.